Religious Art & Worldviews · Artists
Anonymous Tamil caster lineages whose lost-wax bronzes — above all the dancing Shiva — are the summit of Indian sculpture.
Tagged: Sculpture Medieval Liturgical Iconic Lost-Wax Casting Hindu Shaivism
No Chola master's name survives; the workshops were hereditary, court- and temple-funded, and bound to iconometric manuals that fixed each deity's proportions. Their cire perdue casting produced portable processional images of a fineness Europe would not match for centuries.
The pictured Parvati stands for their output: a goddess made to be carried, bathed, dressed, and danced through festival streets, as her bronze sisters still are in Tamil temples.
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